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A Failure of Imagination: “The Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years”
Let’s get a few things straight. I do see Toni Morrison at the top of the list and that makes me smile. And, for the record, I really appreciate the quality and the complexity of many of the other novels mentioned. Roth, DeLillo, Updike and McCarthy certainly have a lot of offer.
But take a stroll done the list of the works that received multiple votes. Does the number of Roth/McCarthy/DeLillo/Updike novels receiving votes really reflect how much those writers transcend the rest of their literary generation — or does it simply reflect the fact that we have a very narrow sense of what good fiction is?
Think about it. The only other woman who makes the list (Marilynne Robinson) also happens to have written the only book on the list that the New York Times never reviewed.
Just think about it.
Posted at 1:05 PM | Permalink | | 
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May 11, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Good points.
Tangentially, I notice a few other things: Philip Roth has no fewer than five of the top 25 books of the last quarter-century?! Your grouping of Roth, Updike, DeLillo, and McCarthy together account for more than half the list!
It’s obviously not a “your 25 favorite books ever” survey; it’s a “your one favorite book from each of the 10 or 15 most-praised writers” survey. Roth hasn’t written the 5 best books in memory (he hasn’t written two of them); he’s one of the most highly-regarded writers in memory and he’s written more than 5 books, which is different.
May 16, 2006 at 7:39 am
I must be the only person in America who doesn’t really “get” Beloved.
June 1, 2006 at 11:16 am
The New York Times reviews cater to a very specific, high-literary niche that doesn’t really represent the spectrum of HUGE literary achievements in the last 25 years. These literary personalities aren’t that exceptional when compared with books like Mark Danielewski’s adventurous House of Leaves, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and the brilliant “genre” fiction of Ian Banks.
The high-brow literary community of exotic prose styles and minimalist narrative can keep experimenting. I concede that these authors have done a lot for the literary craft. I just hope that in the next 25 years the fanboys at The New York Times can broaden their tastes a little.
For a much better articulation of this criticism, leveled more at these authors than at their reviewers, check out B. R. Myers’ “A Reader’s Manifesto.”